A woman's place in the military

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Now that the fighting in Iraq is all but over, it's time we ask
some hard questions about the role women soldiers played in this latest
American conflict. One woman died, and two others were taken hostage, one of
whom was severely injured, because their orders took them close enough to
danger to make the military's prohibition against women serving in combat a
mere fig leaf. Two of these women, including the female soldier who died,
were also single mothers. There is no question that these women performed
bravely and honorably, but their individual courage isn't the issue. What
remains to be seen is whether it is in our national interest -- and
civilization's -- to send young women and mothers into battle in the first
place.

The debate over women in combat raged through much of the 1980s
after the Supreme Court upheld the military's right to exclude women from
the draft largely because they were presumed unfit to serve in combat. But
with little notice or fanfare in the early 1990s, female soldiers began
performing roles that would take them ever closer to danger once fighting
broke out.

At the Clinton administration's urging in 1993, Congress
repealed laws that barred women from serving as members of combat aircraft
and warship crews. The following year, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin
repealed so-called "risk rules" that restricted women from certain jobs if
they were deemed at high risk of hostile fire or capture. While the military
still bars women from serving in combat per se, it no longer tries to keep
them out of harm's way.

Feminists, always anxious to prove women are as tough and
capable as men, applaud these changes, though I doubt many rushed down to
recruiting offices in the months leading up to the war to put their
principles to the test. Most young women who join the military do so to
learn a skill, have a secure job with decent benefits and serve their
country. Among enlisted women, the desire to fight is minimal -- only 29
percent believe women should be able to serve in combat positions, according
to surveys taken by the Army in 1992. But whether some women are willing to
kill -- and risk being killed -- to defend and serve their country isn't the
point. The real issue is whether we should encourage them to do so.

No matter how much we modernists pretend otherwise, women are
different from men, and their roles are not interchangeable. Females are not
just smaller versions of males; they are also, on average, far less
aggressive and more nurturing, qualities that suit them to be good mothers
but not warriors. Not only do women do all the childbearing, but the period
of their lives in which they can help perpetuate the species is far more
limited than men's as well. As it so happens, females' prime childbearing
years -- their twenties -- coincide with the age at which most male soldiers
are likely to fall in combat.

Asked about the growing risk the new rules pose to soldiers who
also happen to be mothers, one retired Army colonel snapped, "What about the
males who get blown away? Which is worse, to lose the father of a child or
the mother of a child?" It's hard to believe he didn't know the answer to
that question. As tragic as the death of a father is in a young child's
life, it simply can't compare to the loss of a mother.

Nor should we be concerned only with the prospect of the
ultimate separation of mother and child when a female soldier dies. What
about the effects of even a few months' separation of an infant or toddler
from his or her soldier mom deployed halfway around the world? The
military's only concern is that the soldier has a "care plan" in place so
that combat readiness won't be impaired, but a generation of military
dependents may be harmed by such indifference to their well-being.

In the name of equal opportunity for women in the military,
we've chosen to ignore nature -- or worse, we're committed to altering it.
We may succeed in training succeeding generations of young women to become
warriors, but we can't begin to know the toll our hubris will take on the
individuals involved, their families and our society.